Cinnabar Shadows (15 page)

"Wind and fire," Ruari exclaimed as he crossed the threshold. "We're flat out of luck, Pavek."

Zvain used more inventive language to say the same thing. Mahtra said nothing until Pavek was inside
the stone building.

That was possible. The warding was as thick and bright as any Pavek had seen before; thicker by far
than the wardings the civil bureau maintained on the various postern passages through the city walls. He'd
guess a high templar had hung the shimmering curtain.

"There was some light before, but there was a passage here, too." Mahtra indicated a place now
hidden by the warding. "We'd use the passage. Now—They showed me what would happen if I touched
the light."

"It must be twice as powerful as the one under the walls," Ruari said, making a pensive face. He
remembered warding from when Pavek had led them through a postern passage on their way to rescue
Akashia from House Escrissar. "At least twice as powerful. I can feel it; it makes my teeth hurt and my
hair stand up. The other one didn't. Don't think your medallion trick's going to work like it did last year."

Pavek shouldered his way to the front. He took his medallion from his neck and grasped it carefully by
the edges, with the striding lion to the front. "You forget: I'm at least twice the templar I was then."

A cascade of blue-green sparks leapt to the medallion, leaving a black, wardless space in the curtain.
Pavek moved the ceramic in an outward-growing spiral, collecting more sparks, making a bigger hole. His
arm was numb and faintly blue-green by the time he had a hole large enough to let them through. He went
last; it closed behind him, leaving them in darkness. Pavek sucked his teeth and swore under his breath.

"What's the matter?" Ruari asked.

"One-sided warding."

"So? Then we've got no problem getting out—"

The half-elf would have walked headlong into oblivion if Pavek hadn't seized his arm and shoved him
against the rough stone wall.

"Death-trap, fool! Warding to keep curious folk out, but a blind trap for anyone who was already inside
when the wards were set."

Ruari went limp against Pavek's grip on his shirt. "Can we get out?"

"Same way we got in—just have to make certain I'm in front and my medallion's in front of me," Pavek
said with more good-humor and optimism than he felt. "Wish I had a bit of chalk to mark the walls. Wish I
had a torch to see the walls..."

"There're torches on the other side," Mahtra volunteered, then added: "There used to be."

"I can see," Ruari informed them, relying on the night-vision he'd inherited from his elven mother. "I've
marked these rocks in my mind. I'll know this place when we're here again. Swear it."

"See that you do," Pavek said, and Zvain tittered nervously somewhere on his left. "Still wish I had a
torch."

"The path's not hard," Mahtra assured them. "I never carried a torch, and I can't see in the dark. Hold
hands; I'll lead."

And she did, without a hint of her earlier trepidations. Her grip was cool and dry around Pavek's
fingers, while Zvain, behind Pavek, had a sweaty hand that threatened to slip away with every hesitant step
the boy took. Ruari brought up the rear, or Pavek assumed he did. Between his druid training and his innate
talents, the half-elf could be utterly silent when he chose.

The air in the passage was nighttime cool and heavy with moisture, like the air in Telhami's grove. It
had a faintly musty scent, but nothing approaching the stench Pavek would have expected from the carnage
Mahtra had described. He'd believed her since she appeared on the salt flats. He'd trusted her
unquestioningly, as he trusted no one else, certainly not the Lion-King who'd sent her. A thousand ominous
thoughts broke his mind's surface.

"There's light ahead," Ruari announced in an excited whisper.

Light meant magic or fire. Pavek took a deep breath through his nose. He couldn't smell anything, but
he couldn't see anything, either.

"Let me go first," he said to Mahtra, striding past her.

The passage was wide enough for two good-sized humans and high enough that he hadn't bumped his
head. They'd come through a few narrower spots, but none that made Pavek feel as if the ground had
swallowed him whole. He didn't suggest that Mahtra stay behind or that Ruari stay behind with her. He
didn't sense danger ahead, not in that almost-magical way a man could sometimes sense a trap or ambush
before it was too late, but if things did go bad, he wanted Ruari and his staff where they could be of some
use—not to mention the 'protection' Mahtra claimed to possess but hadn't ever described or demonstrated.

He thumbed the guard that held his steel sword—scavenged from the battlefield after the battle with
Escrissar's mercenaries for Quraite—in its scabbard. "Stay close. Stay quiet," he ordered his troops. "Keep
balanced. If I stop short, I don't want to hear you grunting and stumbling."

The enclosed passage ended at the top of a curving ramp. Overhead, there was open air filled with the
dim light, solid rock on his left, and a slowly diminishing wall on his right. Pavek edged along the wall,
keeping his head down, until the wall was low enough for him to see over while still providing him with
something to hide behind. After taking a deep breath for courage, he peeked over the top—

And was so amazed by what he saw that he forgot to hunker down again.

Urik's reservoir was larger than any druid's pool, larger than anything Pavek could have imagined on
his own. It was a dark mirror reflecting the glow from its far shore, flawless, except for circular ripples that
appeared and faded as he gazed across it. The glow came from five huge bowls that seemed at first to
hover in the still air, though when he squinted, Pavek could make out a faint, silvery scaffolding beneath
them.

Other than the bowls, there was nothing: no corpses, no burnt-out huts, none of the debris a veteran
templar expected to find in the aftermath of carnage.

But the bowls themselves...

Pavek didn't have the words to describe their delicate, subtly shifting color or the aura that shone
steadily around them. They were beautiful, identical, perfect in every imaginable way, and now that he'd
seen them, the foreboding he hadn't felt when Ruari first saw light ahead fell on him like burning oil.

Mahtra wasn't a liar. Lord Hamanu was trustworthy. And someone—Kakzim—had contrived the
deaths of countless innocents and misfits so these bowls could be set in their places above the water.

Set there and left alone.

By everything Pavek could see or hear, there wasn't another living creature in the cavern. He gave the
agreed-upon signal, and Ruari brought the other two down the ramp.

Mahtra gasped.

Zvain began a curse: "Hamanu's great, greasy—" which he didn't finish because Pavek clouted him
hard on the floating ribs. Notwithstanding an eleganta's trade or the things Mahtra must have seen in House
Escrissar, there were some things honest men did not say in the presence of women. The boy folded
himself around the ache. Tears ran from his eyes, but he kept his lips sealed and soundless.

"What do you think?" Pavek gave his attention to Ruari, who was his superior where magic was
concerned.

The half-elf rolled his lower lip out. "I don't like it. Doesn't feel..." He closed his eyes and opened them
again. "Doesn't feel healthy."

Pavek sighed. He'd had the same sensation. He'd hoped Ruari could be more specific.

They stayed where they were, waiting for a sound, a flicker of movement to tell them they weren't
alone. There was nothing—unless the most disciplined ambushers on the Tablelands were waiting for them.
When Pavek's instincts said walk or scream, he started down the ramp, slow and quiet, but convinced that
they were in no immediate danger. The cavern was too vast for the sort of one-sided warding they'd
encountered earlier; it was too vast for any warding at all. Ruari prodded the reservoir's gravelly shore with
his staff, searching for more traditional traps. He overturned a few charred lumps that might have been
parts of huts or humans, but nothing that would tell anyone what had happened here less than two quinths
ago, if Mahtra hadn't told them.

When they got to the far shore, they found each bowl mounted on its own platform that leaned over the
water. The silvery scaffolds shone with light as well as reflecting the greater light of the bowls they held.
Caution said, look, don't touch, but Pavek was a high templar who'd painted the Lion-King's kilts. He wasn't
afraid of a bit of glamour, and he recognized a ladder in the scaffold's regular cross-pieces. With his
medallion against his palm, he touched a glowing strut.

"I'll be—" he began, then caught himself. "It's made of bones!"

Pavek ran the medallion from one lashing to the next, absorbing the silver glow. The scaffolding that
emerged from the glamour was constructed from bones of every description. It was thoroughly ingenious,
but except for the glamour—which was a simple deception and not much of one at that—it was completely
nonmagical. He tested the built-in ladder and, finding it strong enough to bear his weight, scrambled up to
the platform. Ruari came after him, but the other two stayed on the ground.

There was a pattern: leather and bones, a lot of leather, a lot of bones. Pavek felt a word rising through
his own thick thoughts, but without breaking the surface, the word was gone when the bowl suddenly
shuddered.

Hand on his sword, he turned around in time to see Ruari tottering on the bowl's rim. Demonstrating a
singular lack of foresight, the half-elf had apparently tried to leap up there from the scaffold, but all those
losing contests with his elven cousins finally yielded a victory. Ruari thrust his staff forward and down into
the bowl. The move acted as a counterbalance, and he stood steady a moment before leaping lightly back to
the scaffold platform beside Pavek.

Slop from the tip of Ruari's staff struck Pavek's leg. It was warm, slimy, and unspeakably foul. Pavek
swiped it off with his fingers, then shook his hand frantically. Ruari reversed the staff to get his own closer
view of the remaining gook.

He touched it, sniffed it, and would have touched it a second time with the tip of his tongue—if Pavek
hadn't swung at the staff and sent it flying.

"Have you lost what little wit you were born with, scum?"

Ruari drew himself up to his full height, a good head-and-a-half taller than Pavek. "I was going to find
out whether it was wholesome or not. Druids can do that, you know. Not bumble-thumbs like you, but real
druids."

"Idiots can do it, too, the same way you were going to do it! Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy—the stuff's
poison!"

"Poison?"

Ruari stared at the dark slime on his fingers, and, judging by his puzzled expression, saw something
entirely different. So Pavek grabbed Ruari's hand and smeared the sludge clinging to the half-elf's hand
across the medallion, where it hissed and steamed with a frightful stench. Ruari was properly appalled

"Laq?" he whispered.

"Damned if I know."

"Laq?" Zvain shouted from the ground where he brandished Ruari's staff.

"You keep your hands away from that tip—understand!" Pavek shouted, which only drew the boy's
attention to that exact part of the staff, which he promptly touched.

Pavek leapt to the ground, twisting his ankle on the landing. By the time things were sorted out, both he
and Zvain were limping and Ruari had joined them.

"This time, Kakzim's trying to" poison Urik's water," the half-elf said, proud that he'd deciphered the
purpose of the bowls.

"Looks like it," Pavek agreed, putting weight gingerly on his sore ankle. "Had to get rid of the folk living
here so he could build these damn bone scaffolds and skin bowls!" Which, while true, were not the wisest
words he'd ever uttered.

Mahtra raised her head to. stare wide-eyed at the bowls. It didn't take mind-bending to guess what kind
of skin she thought Kakzim had used to make them.

Mahtra shrieked, "Father!" She took off at a run for the nearest scaffold.

Ruari grabbed her as she ran past him, and let go just as quickly shouting: "What are you!"

She fell to the shore with her head tilted so they could see that a milky membrane covered her eyes.
The gold patches on her skin gave off bright fumes that smelled a bit of sulphur.

Zvain dropped to the ground as well. "Don't fight!" he shouted, then curled up with his knees against his
forehead. "Don't fight," he repeated, sobbing this time. "She'll blast you if you fight."

Pavek stood beside Ruari, one hand on his sword, the other on his medallion, waiting for Mahtra to be
herself again. The fumes subsided, the membranes withdrew. She sat up slowly, stretching her arms.

"You want to tell us what that was about?" Pavek demanded.

"The makers—" Mahtra began, and Pavek rolled his eyes.

She began to cry—at least that's what Pavek thought she was doing. The sound she made was like
nothing he'd heard before, but she was starting to curl up the same way as Zvain. Ignoring his ankle, he
squatted down beside her.

"I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Father—"

"I don't know what happened to your father's body, but those aren't his bones. Those are bones from
animals. The bowls, too. The bowls are made from animal hides, inix maybe. I was a cruel, dung-skulled
fool to say what I did."

A slaughterhouse. Pavek got to his feet. "Codesh!" The word that had escaped before all the
excitement began. "Codesh! Kakzim's in Codesh! He's in the butchers' village—" His enthusiasm faded as
quickly as it had arisen.

"But the passage's in the elven market. Someone would have noticed, not me hides; maybe, but the
bones for sure. There's no way to get those bones here without someone noticing."

Mahtra stood up slowly, using Pavek's arm for balance. "Henthoren sent a runner across the plaza to
me that morning. He said he'd let no one into the cavern since sundown, when I left. I think—I think he
knew what had happened, and was trying to tell me it wasn't his fault—"